Ubiquitous Metainformation and the WYWWYWI Principle

Joseph Catanio, Nkechi Nnadi, Li Zhang*, Michael Bieber and Roberto Galnares
Information Systems Department, College of Computing Sciences, New Jersey Institute of Technology
*Computer Science Department
Email: JosephCatanio@att.net, nn5@njit.edu, lxz9848@oak.njit.edu, bieber@oak.njit.edu, rxg3564@njit.edu
Key features: References; Figures 1-6; Tables 1-2

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1 Motivation: what you want, when you want it
2 Examples
3 Metainformation
3.1 Structural relationships
3.2 content-based relationships
4 Supplemental link-based services
4.1 Virtual documents and link-based services
5 Systems integration through linking and the Metainformation Engine
5.1 Structural relationship rules
5.2 Element metadata rules
5.3 Implementing link-based services
5.4 Metainformation Engine details and related research
5.4.1 Metainformation Engine architecture
5.4.2 Incorporating just-in-time virtual document support
5.4.3 Incorporating content-based analysis
5.4.4 Related research
6 Combating cognitive overload
7 Relationship analysis
7.1 RA's generic relationship taxonomy
7.2 Conducting a relationship analysis
8 Ubiquitous WYWWYWI
9 In closing
Acknowledgements
References
Author details

Abstract

Computer systems should provide what you want, when you want it (the WYWWYWI principle, pronounced "why why why"), but they frequently do not. Our research encourages a new philosophy of design based on the WYWWYWI principle, and the tools for authors to provide this easily. Comprehensive metainformation embodies the WYWWYWI principle. Metainformation includes the structural relationships, content-based relationships, user-declared link-based relationships, and metadata around an element of interest. Combined, the metainformation goes a long way towards establishing the full semantics for (the meaning of and context around) a system's elements. We take a three-pronged approach to providing metainformation on a grand scale. First, we provide a systematic methodology for systems analysts to determine the relationships around elements of interest in their information domains - relationship analysis. Relationship analysis will result in a comprehensive set of a domain's structural relationships. Second, we provide a Metainformation Engine, which automatically generates sets of structural and content-based relationships around elements of interest as links, as well as metadata within static and virtual documents. Third, we provide an infrastructure for widespread link-based services within both static and virtual documents. This approach provides the inspiration as well as a sound foundation for a ubiquitous embracing of the WYWWYWI principle in the everyday systems people use, both on the Web and beyond.

Figures

Figure 1. Mockup of a purchasing legacy system with metainformation support
Figure 2. Mockup of a digital library document with metainformation support
Figure 3. The correspondence between the links and their underlying structural relationships in Figure 1
Figure 4. Metainformation Engine integration overview
Figure 5. Screenshot of our current Digital Library Service Integration prototype
Figure 6. Subset of the relationships around books found through a relationship analysis

Tables

Table 1. Relationship analysis's 16 generic relationships
Table 2. Sample exploratory questions emanating from relationship analysis's generic relationships in Table 1

Acknowledgements

We are honored to acknowledge Steven O. Kimbrough of the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, who originated the term WYWWYWI in 1988. This vision has guided our research for the last 15 years. We gratefully appreciate partial funding support for this research by the United Parcel Service, the New Jersey Center for Pervasive Information Technology, the New Jersey Commission on Science and Technology, and the National Science Foundation under grants IIS-0135531 and DUE-0226075.

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Author Details

Michael Bieber is an Associate Professor of Information Systems. He teaches both on-campus and in the distance learning program, often combining the students in both modes. Dr Bieber is conducting research in several related areas: participatory collaborative learning, asynchronous learning networks, distance education, infrastructures for educational software, lightweight systems integration, digital library integration, relationship analysis (as part of the software engineering process), Web engineering, link-based services, automatic link and metainformation generation, hypermedia, community informatics and virtual communities. He co-directs NJIT's Collaborative Hypermedia Research Laboratory. He holds a PhD in Decision Sciences from the University of Pennsylvania.

Joseph Catanio is a PhD student in the Information Systems Department at NJIT. He has worked as a software engineer for 15 years doing embedded systems, application, and Web development. As a researcher, Joe has developed a process explicitly to identify and document the relationship structure of a problem domain. This process, Relationship Analysis, is being positioned as part of the software engineering process. He holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from Rutgers University, an MS in Computer Science from NJIT.

Roberto Galnares is currently the Chief Technology Officer of a company in the insurance sector. Dr Galnares has conducted research on dynamic metainformation generation, meta-languages, Web engineering, distributed applications, and object-oriented vocabularies. His dissertation was based on the design and implementation of a Dynamic Hypermedia Engine, an earlier version of the MetaInformation Engine. He performed part of his academic training as researcher at the IBM Watson Research Center in New York. He holds a PhD in Computer and Information Science from the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Nkechi Nnadi is a PhD student in the Information Systems Department at NJIT. Her research interests include component-based software architectures, semantic integration of systems, and resolving semantic differences in onotologies.

Li Zhang is a PhD student in the Computer Science Department at NJIT. Her research interests include dynamic generation of virtual documents and automatically providing hypermedia support to these.

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